G325 - Criticla Perspectives in Media
(25 mark) 30 mins to answer
You will choose to evaluate one of your pieces of coursework in relation to a media concept
One of the selected areas will be selected for you to write about:
- genre
- narrative
- representation
- audience
- media language
Need to understand all concepts, including relevant theories
Macro - genre, narrative, representation, audience, media language
Micro - lighting, mise en scene, props, sound, location
Talk about the micro analysis which enables the macro to exist
Genre
Genres are categories or types of media text. genre are recognisable through the repeated use of genreic codes and conventions
- iconographies
- narrative
- representations
- ideologies
Which of the above codes and conventions does your c/w use and how?
Theories for genre
- Steve Neale (1980) - all genres are instances of repetition and difference
- Douglas Pye - films have to conform to audience expectations about narrative
- Tom Ryall - conventions - narrative, themes, characters/stereotypes, iconography
If you are talking about genre then audience links in with this too for example 'my courseowork follows typical conventions which will gain audience enjoyment from 'spotting the conventions' (repetition) and making comparisons with other films of the same genre'. Audience like the anticipation of waiting fot the predictable features.
however if your coursework challenges conventions you can talk about how it confuses the audience but they enjoy it by seeing rules being broken and trying to work it out.
How did you use genre to offer your audience a framework? Do you think your target audience enjoyed spotting the conventions or seeing the rules broken?
Narrative
Your A2 teaser trailer would suit this question best
Theories for narrative
- Propp - 8 character roles (there are certain characters that appear in every film e.g. hero vs villain, antagonist vs. protaganist, damsel in distress etc)
- Todorov - equilibrium - disequilibrium - new equilibrium (film starts of with equilibrium (reality normality), leads to problem (disequilibrium) then character over comes this disequilibrium (problem solved) - new equilibrium)
- Barthes - 5 codes (action, enigma, cultural, symbolic, semic)
- Levi-Strauss - binary opposites
Verisimilitude - normality, how you constructed normality within your product e.g lighting, location, props, clothing realistic to create verisimiltude.
Representation
- Who or what is being represented?
- How is the representation being created?
- Who has created the representation? (me/partner)
- Why is the representation created in that way?/ What is the intention?
- What is the effect of the representation?
Talk about mode of address, location, gender stereotypes, mise en scene, music, editing, camera work. Did you represent any characters in a certain way to remind your audience of someone/something else?
Intertextuality Versimilitude - refrences to other films/media texts that represents an existing popular text
Audience
Consider: age, gender, demographic profile, socio-economic group, existing/new, lifestyle, values, attitude
- Categories A, B, C1, C2, D, E
- Is your audience mass or niche
- What would the three reactions to your coursework be:
1. a preferred reading (your intended interpretation)
2. An oppositional reading ( someone who didnt like it)
3. A negotiated reading (someone who isnt the target audience but might appreciate it for whatever reason)
(Stuart Hall)
- How did you try and please your audience?
- Were you successful? Did you satisfy audience needs and expectation? (refer to audience feedback)
- At the heart of this is the fact that all media texts are created in order to make money
Media Language
You need to write about:
- Denotations
- Connotations
- Anchorage (to encourage audience in e.g. A picture of someone famous then anchoring audience in with a tag line or 'exclusive')
Genre, Representations, camera, editing, sound (diagetic/non diagetic), lighting, music, mise en scene are all media languages used to communicate with the audience.
Use theories from the other macro elements
Examplar Essay
1b) The media production I am going to write about in relation to genre is my favourite piece from the whole course which is my horror teaser trailer.
The genre of the trailer is obviously ‘horror’ and this in itself allowed us to be creative with narrative etc but limited us because we had to stick to a certain amount of generic conventions in order for it to be recognised by it’s existing target audience. Steve Neal said that ‘genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations’ which meant certain generic features had to be included and repeated which in my case was the use of a creepy location of the woods as well as hand held camera and restricted narration to cause disorientation and suspense within our trailer.
However, the pattern of variation Neal describes also links to my horror teaser trailer because we were able to creatively push the boundaries by twisting some generic features in order to make the trailer interesting and therefore cause the audience to want to watch the full movie. For this my group chose use a female psycho killer I order to subvert the stereotypical male dominated role. This female identification through point of view shots etc captured our female audience because were providing them with power and this is unusual for the horror genre although it is known for its forward thinking approach as it often attempts to focus on sub-cultural views instead of targeting the mainstream. Genre encompasses many parts and the trailer links to it in more ways than one. Its use of enclosed location and the fact the woods attempts to reinforce our society’s fear of loneliness and isolation which the woods creates when the three friends get lost. In these sections of the trailer we used a lot of heavy cross cutting between the female victim who is running anxiously through the woods in order to find her friends and get home safely. We also used the Kuleshov and collision cutting methods as the pace began slow as the friends head our in the car unaware of the danger before them and once they are in the woods we deliberately quickened the pace of editing to cause tension and to show that something is not right, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats.
Editing and mise-en-scene is really important to genre and reflects very quickly certain moods and atmospheres. Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes argued that the horror genre like many others used ‘binary oppositions’ in order to show the contrast between good and evil in order to force the audience to be constantly questioning the trailer for example; in my trailer I used light and dark to connote their happiness and carefree attitude in the daytime and the darkness to emphasise their fear and reliance on their senses. This is particularly important to the horror genre as characters are often shown in high angle shots to appear vulnerable and therefore under threat.
Gore or ‘body horror’ is also a common generic convention used by most horror films that we studied including Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero who used it to make the audience feel sick by forcing them to see extreme violence. In my own trailer we were inspired to use gore differently by showing a hanging scene in slow motion to create tension and the centring in on the face and neck which had been broken and this was shown by the rope burn we had made from latex and the blood pouring down her chest. This shot moves clockwise and slowly zooms in to force the audience to see what the hang (woman) has done. In our final two shots we finish the trailer with the male anti hero being lifted off the ground with blood pouring out of his mouth which causes the audience to assume no one survives because the final girl is stabbed by her friend accidentally which quickens the pace and adds tension but she is the survivor who as Carol Clover suggests will be terrorised throughout the film and finally overcome the monster. This plays with the audiences emotions and links back to the horror genre well by creating our own style of horror. Andrew Sarris argues because it encompasses so much and is key to explaining a film. Genre is the ideas that collectively make a particular recognisable style that draws in its existing target audience. My horror trailer had expressionist camera angles as the female victim desperately trips over the camera and we see her running above it as well as close ups of her facial expression that causes us to identify with her fear and therefore makes us scared. This meant the audience also were forced to objectify the female victim from the high angle camera shot down her top in which we can see her breasts slightly after watching other Hitchcock movies which use the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey to force us to take a male’s viewpoint.
In my trailer we also used an iconic symbol of the noose because obviously as a hang woman she needed the prop but also as a female the circular shape suggested female power and this is something the horror genre often does but for male characters using guns etc as phallic symbols which we also used as the male anti hero takes out a knife and stabs his friend frantically when she walks up behind him. The horror trailer was made much darker in Final Cut Pro using the brightness and contrast menu and also dragged the saturated colours towards the blue in order to create a dark, dusky night time atmosphere a generic convention of horror trailers.
The generic conventions we chose to use were all important to the success of our product and since distributing it on YouTube we have over 4000 which I am really pleased with and gives me the confidence that we obviously stuck to the genre enough to capture our intended target audience but were creative enough to make people want to keep watching the trailer and virally sharing it with others.
Genre places a media text into a grouping giving it an identity which can be recognised by the mainstream society and I believe my product is successfully fitted to the horror genre using the narrative that Todorov argued was important to the horror genre by following an equilibrium at the beginning then a problem which in our case was the male anti hero playing a joke on the soon to be female victim making jump running after him causing their separation then a pathway to resolution – as they attempt to find each other and then a new equilibrium at the end which we deliberately left as an open ending to capture our audience effectively.
EAA 10/10
EG 10/10
Term 5/5
(24/25)
Macro
Micro
Theory
Example
